Sherlock Holmes isn’t the only man talented with make-up…

S-BOMB warning. That’s SPOILER-ALERT, for those less crude than I.

Now, The Man with the Twisted Lip is a curious tale (and, as is current, another of Sherlock Holmes). It starts with Watson running an errand for a friend, chasing down one of his patients. Simple enough. But who else should he run into in a vile opium den than his dear friend Sherlock Holmes in disguise?

This story is, in fact, all about disguises, though the fact isn’t readily apparent. The case that Holmes is currently manning is the matter of the death of one Neville St. Clair, more specifically, murder. But there is no body to be found, and the opium den’s lascar is adamant that he knows nothing of this man. The only man to be found on the upper level of his building is his tennant, Hugh Boone.

Hugh Boone is arrested for the murder of Neville St. Clair. As Holmes repeats, it is a simple case in appearance but not in nature. The wife is certain her husband is alive, because she received a letter a week after his supposed death in what she knows for a fact to be his hand. So Holmes starts to meditate in his own fashion.

The answer took most of a night to come to him, but when it did, he was certain of it and rose early, taking Watson along with him to the cell where Hugh Boone lay asleep. It was a joke at the station that the man desperately needed a bath, and Holmes agrees, and his impromptu bathing of Boone’s face reveals none other than Neville St. Clair.

Not murdered, not missing, just incredibly ashamed of being a professional beggar and possibly being caught by his wife.